My mother was young and liberated in the 1920s. She attended college, and studied as the only female in the department of anthropology of the graduate school at Harvard. She traveled to Europe, smoked, and drank. She had several affairs before she married my father. My father had been raised in a strict, prohibitionist family, where on Sunday children were permitted only to read the Bible. He was entranced by my liberated mother. Both my mother and father allowed me to see them naked and to join that bare expanse of skin beneath the covers on a Sunday morning. Recalling such earthy license, I was astonished years later to hear that my mother often refused my father sex. Her record for rejection was three years while in her thirties.
When my mother bathed me, she reserved the genital area
until last. She scrubbed it harshly, indicating that I had better
learn to wipe myself clean with the toilet tissue. When old
enough to bathe myself, I avoided washing or touching that
tainted area. At age five I contracted a vaginal infection. My
mother took me to a gynecologist without assessing the problem
herself. The doctor gingerly examined me while my
mother commented on the stench. He recommended sitz
baths. Night after night I sat for a half hour in three inches
of tepid water well laced with boric acid. I thought my foulness
would contaminate the water and cause a rash. I felt
dirtier after bathing than before. The infection cleared up
faster than my fantasies.
By the time I entered medical school, I was married and
had borne two children. I still avoided tub baths and
scrubbed hastily in the shower. I had never masturbated, climaxed,
nor viewed my sexual organs in the mirror. I might
have waited for Alex Comfort with the other unfortunates of
my overactive but undersexed generation, had it not been for
freshman anatomy.
My cadaver was a female. I ruminated
upon my own naivete as I dissected her shriveled organs
through the acrid fumes of formaldehyde. With scientific fervor
I promised to investigate not only my anatomy, but my
sexual function as well. With Grant's Atlas of Anatomy
propped at bedside, I began my task.
The years that followed were crowded by work and children,
carefully reared according to Dr. Spock. Above all, I
avoided my mother's mistakes with my own offspring and
made no connection between genitals and dirt. I didn't think
my children had sexual problems. Indeed, there was little or
no ostensible erotic activity, for which I was mildly thankful.
One little girl did develop a passionate interest in playing
"horsey." She wrapped her legs about my body and ecstatically
rubbed her pubis up and down. Too sophisticated to
push her away, I calmly but firmly placed her aside and rose
to cook dinner. I refused to play "horsey" again.
My oldest daughters are now in their twenties. Separately,
each has confided concern about an incomplete erotic
response. How could this be? Didn't I read the right books?
Hadn't I avoided the pitfalls of my own childhood? Belatedly,
I realized that I had never said anything nice about sex. I
had averted my eyes, studied my replies, hushed my husband's
moans of pleasure, and locked the bedroom door.
Three generations had repeated.